Presently, before a customer, such as a professional contractor or homeowner is allowed to dig in the ground, the customer is required to make a phone call to 811. This initiates a process to get the underground utility lines at the digging site marked. When a call to 811 is made, the call is routed to a local one call center. The local one call center operator gathers information on the location of the digging job and routes the call to all the affected utility companies. The utility companies then send a professional locator to the digging site to perform a locate by marking the utility lines within a few days. Once the approximate location of the underground lines has been marked, the professional contractor or homeowner may proceed with digging at the dig site.
However, these dig sites become very high risk areas for cable cuts or other hardware disruptions even when the locates are performed accurately. In the event that a cable does get cut, the service restoration department of the utility companies must react to isolate the outage location, assess the services impacted and then restore service as soon as possible. Depending on the extent of damage, it can take a very long time to restore service. It may be desirable for utility companies to be able to restore some services, such as emergency call lines, 911 lines and other preferred subscription services lines quickly. Additionally, utility companies may need to restore service by rerouting the flow of data traffic carried by the affected cables. At the current time, the contingency planning for service disruptions caused by an activity at a dig site is reactive and not proactive, leading to longer service restoration times and a more panicked response.